Mobile service providers are moving away from access-based business models due to diminishing margins in traditional network based services. Instead, there now exist efforts to target the millions of subscribers on their network with rich content and multimedia services. Mobile content is any type of text or media content (news, weather forecasts, ring tones, wallpapers, games, applications, etc.) that can be viewed or used on a mobile phone. Since the service providers already have a billing relationship with these customers, it is easy to offer them content services that can be billed through an existing pay channel. Direct mobile billing is a desirable option for purchasing mobile content when compared to payment solutions that require the sharing of private information (e.g., credit card number, account number, authentication information with online payment instruments, etc.).
Generally, mobile service providers rely on content partners (CP) to provide content. There are two models typically used by operators for providing content to their customers, on-deck and off-deck. In the on-deck model, content may be provided by a CP, but sold under the branding of the service provider. In the off-deck model, content is sold directly by the CP to the service provider's customers. Traditionally, the on-deck model has been the preferred model for providers.
However, it has been noted that service providers that have opened up to the off-deck model have seen their content business growing many-fold due to the sheer volume, regional coverage and creativity of off-deck content partners; the on-deck model often cannot match these advantages. As such, in the off-deck model, services are provided directly by the CP to the subscriber and the corresponding charges are communicated to the service provider. Implicit in this mode of operation is the assumption that the service provider has complete trust on charging claims made by its content providers.
Understandably, such trust is difficult to establish with a large number of content partners and this lack of trust is a major hindrance in acceptance of the off-deck model by service providers. The concerns associated with this model in the current form are related to the following actions that a fraudulent CP may be able to perform unchecked, merely by way of example: charging a customer for a content he/she did not purchase or was tricked into purchasing; charging an amount more than the price displayed at the time of purchase; starting a subscription against the customer's wishes when the customer only made a one-time purchase request; renewing a subscription even though the subscriber has given instructions to stop the service; and providing a service which is inconsistent with a displayed specification.
This, in turn, leads to problems difficulties at the service provider end, including (by way of example): customer dissatisfaction, resulting in a blow to the provider's reputation and an attendant decline in revenue; increased help desk calls to handle resulting complaints, thus adding to the cost of supporting the content business; revenue leakage due to revenue share for unauthorized transactions going to the CP; and increased costs of partner revenue settlement and partner management, thereby limiting the capability to partner with a large number of content partners.